01 - overview

Leading a team from ideation to prototype in four weeks

Vita Terra is mock sustainable clothing brand developed as a collaborative academic project. The course focused on design workflow within the graphics industry, and I was selected by the instructor to lead the UX/UI team and produce an prototype of the brand's e-commerce site.
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The project operated on a condensed, agile timeline with cross-functional teams handling branding, typography, color, photography, and UX/UI in parallel. My role sat at the intersection of design and project management.

02 - leadership & process

Managing people, deadlines, and design in parallel

As UX/UI team lead, I was responsible for keeping communication open and consistent, ensuring deliverables were submitted on time, and aligning our work with the other cross-functional teams. This was my first official project management role, and I had to adapt quickly.

To keep the team organized, I created a Notion workspace that functioned as a Kanban board — tracking deadlines, notes, and feedback so the team always knew what was done and what was ahead. Regular check-ins via Slack Huddle kept everyone aligned between weekly presentations.

03 - design

Building an e-commerce experience that feels intentional

Vita Terra's brand identity was built around sustainability and transparency — values that needed to come through in every design decision. The interface needed to feel clean and trustworthy, with a shopping experience that made finding and buying products feel effortless.

One of my ideas — a dynamic call-to-action button overlaid on a hero video on the home page — was selected out of 18 team concepts as the main feature to move forward with. Seeing that idea go from a sketch to a fully realized prototype was one of the most rewarding parts of the project.

04 - Prototype

A functional user flow, from home to cart

The final prototype featured a fully functional call-to-action system and a complete user flow from the home page through to adding a product to the cart. While the visual assets — logos, typography, color palette, and photography — were produced by the other cross-functional teams, our UX/UI work laid the structural and interactive foundation for the entire site.

05 - Outcome & reflection

Leading a team showed me what I'm capable of

This project showed me that I'm capable in a project management and leadership role — something I hadn't fully tested before. Keeping a team of relative strangers aligned and productive under a tight deadline, while also contributing design work, built my confidence in ways that purely individual projects hadn't.

The course instructor, Cynthia Storm, left feedback that stuck with me: that I'd set the tone for the team in a way that was both productive and professional. That's exactly the kind of leader I want to be.